Agenda item

Questions on notice

To
receive questions from councillors in accordance with Council
procedure rule 33.

1.Councillor Margaret Crick to Councillor
Roger Cox, Leader of the Council

With memories of the devastating floods in Abingdon in 2007, and
climate change predicted to increase instances of flooding,
residents in South Abingdon are very concerned about the
Environment Agency’s decision to cancel plans for a flood
storage facility at Abingdon Common.
Has the leader been given any further information about alternative
proposals? And how can this council put pressure on the Environment
Agency to ensure action is taken to reduce flooding risk in
Abingdon.

Vale of White Horse District Council is preparing to
return to a purpose-built headquarters in Crowmarsh Gifford. Can the Cabinet member confirm
that he will work with South Oxfordshire District Council to ensure
that the new building is designed to be carbon neutral and energy
efficient, and that despite the lack of public transport to the
site, all efforts are being made to minimise the number of car
journeys that staff and members will be required to
make?

Bearing in mind the lack of public transport to
Crowmarsh Gifford, what plans does the
Cabinet member have to ensure residents and members have meeting
places available to use within the Vale, so that residents
struggling to access council support online or over the phone can
reach us?

3.Councillor Bob Johnston to Councillor
Elaine Ware, Cabinet Member for Housing and
Environment

When established in the 1990's, Registered Social
Landlords decorated their properties periodically, especially when
tenants exchanged properties or moved out, in
order to ensure that properties were in good repair and in
good decorative order. I understand that most internal
repairs and decorating are no longer routinely provided.

Can the Cabinet Member explain why housing providers
operating in the Vale no longer carry out routine interior
decoration? And is there anything this
council can do to help ensure that tenants who are elderly, have
disabilities, or are on low incomes are provided with well
decorated homes in good working order?

In July 2016 Council passed the following motion
“This council resolves to manage our public consultations
with openness and transparency, using industry best practice. Our
public consultations will use open-ended questions that encourage a
range of responses, and officers will produce consultation reports
that highlight all major concerns raised and the actions to be
taken in response. Where we have control of the consultation, we
will ensure openness and transparency. Where we are part of a
governing body managing the consultation, we will openly encourage
openness and transparency.”

What progress has been made since this motion was passed to improve
our consultations and ensure responses from the public and parish
councils influence our decision making in meaningful
ways?

Why are we still seeing situations such as
Shippon Parish not being consulted in
relation to a bid for Garden Village status, a respondent to the
Local Plan consultation having his Reg 19 response missed out, and
the ideas from key stakeholders at the launch event for Oxfordshire
Plan 2050 not included in the vision and aspirations
document?

5.Councillor Emily Smith to Councillor
Roger Cox, Leader of the Council

In December 2014 Council passed a motion to: include
“written information about Vale activities, service and
programmes with future council tax demands”. When looking
into progress on this motion I learned that neither Finance or
Communications officers were aware of this decision by Council and
confirmed that the requested information for residents was never
produced.

Was the Leader aware that this decision by Council was not
actioned? Can he seek assurances from officers that other motions
passed by members since 2014 have been actioned and that mechanisms
are in place to track future motions?

Last summer Transport for New Homes and the
Foundation for Integrated Transport report received national press
coverage. Their report highlighted the problems with new housing
estates being designed around car use, adding to traffic congestion
and preventing healthy communities developing. They highlighted
Great Western Park as an example of poor practice and the report
appeared on the BBC News website under the headline ‘Young
couples trapped in car dependency’. In November, Oxfordshire
County Council unanimously passed a motion to invest in
‘Active Travel’ and allocate more space for cyclists
and pedestrians. But the County Council cannot ensure pedestrians
and cyclists are prioritised in new housing developments without
collaboration with local planning authorities.

How is the Cabinet member working with county colleagues and others
to ensure that the Vale’s planning policies prioritise
cyclists and pedestrians and reduce car dependency when we permit
new housing developments? Have any specific changes been discussed
as a result of the ‘Active
Travel’ motion at the County Council?

7.Councillor Judy Roberts to Councillor
Eric Batts, Cabinet Member for Legal and Democratic

I welcome the announcement that Homes England have
approved a grant for the only ‘Vale affordable housing in
perpetuity project’ off the Eynsham Road. The Oxfordshire
Community Land Trust have already prepared their planning
application for this development but require the easement from the
Vale for which this grant was awarded to progress the scheme. The
Vale applied for this grant in Summer 2018 and the scheme has been
in development for a lot longer. So, please can the Cabinet member
explain why the easement has still not been signed?

At the request of Council in October 2018, the
leader of the council wrote to the Secretary of State for Housing,
Communities and Local Government to request that they review the
definition of housing ‘affordability’. The minister for
housing’s reply told us unequivocally that it has always been this council’s responsibility and within
our power to set our affordable housing policies to reflect local
circumstances. We don’t need Government to redo anything.
Council can set our policies to reflect our own local
circumstances. I’m surprised this was apparently news to the
leader.

The national policy requires that affordable rent be
at least 20% below market rents, and similarly,
that affordable sales prices be at least 20% below
market sales prices. The system is set up so that we rely on market
developers to provide solutions to our local affordable housing
needs. Clearly that’s not been a success. Recent reports tell
us local house prices are between 7 and 17 times annual earnings,
when we know a healthy ratio

is about 4 or 5 times annual savings.

Although it was the leader who wrote the letter to
Ministry of Housing Communities & Local Government about
affordability, it is the cabinet member for planning to whom I
direct this question. What are some of the options to consider that
could finally make a dent in the problem of a lack of

genuinely affordable housing in Vale?

9.Councillor Debby Hallett to Councillor
Roger Cox, Cabinet Member for Partnership and
Insight

How much money did Vale decide to contribute to the
Environment Agency’s recently-cancelled Abingdon flood
scheme? What was the evidence supporting this decision, who
decided, when, and by what means?

There is a recurring problem with new
build housing developments not being completed to an acceptable
standard in line with the approved plans.

There are examples from around the Vale
where developers are not building roads, drainage, homes and play
areas to the specifications agreed when planning permission was
granted which then creates work for this council to rectify –
at a cost for this council and disruption to residents.

Does the Cabinet member agree that councils should have more legal
powers in relation to planning enforcement? And if so, what is the
Cabinet member doing to lobby government to return responsibility
for allbuilding control matters
to local councils?

Minutes:

Prior to consideration of the questions the Chairman
adjourned the meeting at 9.10pm for a short comfort
break.

The meeting reconvened at 9.15pm.

Prior to the expiry of two and a half hours, Council
considered and rejected an option, in accordance with Council
Procedure Rule 82, to suspend Council Procedure Rule 12, which
restricts the duration of a meeting to three hours, to allow
Council to complete the business.

Council
agreed, in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 12, to extend the
duration of the meeting by half an hour.

1.Councillor Margaret Crick to Councillor
Roger Cox, Leader of the Council

With memories of the devastating floods in Abingdon
in 2007, and climate change predicted to increase instances of
flooding, residents in South Abingdon are very concerned about the
Environment Agency’s decision to cancel plans for a flood
storage facility at Abingdon Common.

Has the leader been given any further information about alternative
proposals? And how can this council put pressure on the Environment
Agency to ensure action is taken to reduce flooding risk in
Abingdon?

Vale of White Horse District Council is preparing to
return to a purpose-built headquarters in Crowmarsh Gifford. Can the Cabinet member confirm
that he will work with South Oxfordshire District Council to ensure
that the new building is designed to be carbon neutral and energy
efficient, and that despite the lack of public transport to the
site, all efforts are being made to minimise the number of car
journeys that staff and members will be required to
make?

Bearing in mind the lack of public transport to
Crowmarsh Gifford, what plans does the
Cabinet member have to ensure residents and members have meeting
places available to use within the Vale, so that residents
struggling to access council support online or over the phone can
reach us?

Councillor Blagrove undertook to provide
a written response

3.Councillor Bob Johnston to Councillor
Elaine Ware, Cabinet Member for Housing and
Environment

When established in the 1990's, Registered Social
Landlords decorated their properties periodically, especially when
tenants exchanged properties or moved out, in order to ensure that
properties were in good repair and in good decorative order.
I understand that most internal repairs and decorating are no
longer routinely provided.

Can the Cabinet Member explain why housing providers
operating in the Vale no longer carry out routine interior
decoration? And is there anything this
council can do to help ensure that tenants who are elderly, have
disabilities, or are on low incomes are provided with well
decorated homes in good working order?

In July 2016 Council passed the following motion
“This council resolves to manage our public consultations
with openness and transparency, using industry best practice. Our
public consultations will use open-ended questions that encourage a
range of responses, and officers will produce consultation reports
that highlight all major concerns raised and the actions to be
taken in response. Where we have control of the consultation, we
will ensure openness and transparency. Where we are part of a
governing body managing the consultation, we will openly encourage
openness and transparency.”

What progress has been made since this motion was passed to improve
our consultations and ensure responses from the public and parish
councils influence our decision making in meaningful
ways?

Why are we still seeing situations such as
Shippon Parish not being consulted in
relation to a bid for Garden Village status, a respondent to the
Local Plan consultation having his Reg 19 response missed out, and
the ideas from key stakeholders at the launch event for Oxfordshire
Plan 2050 not included in the vision and aspirations
document?

Answer

Councillor Blagrove responded as follows:

“As Councillor Webber alludes the
referenced motion was passed, and the Council's consultation
approach is guided by our published Customer Engagement Charter
2016 - 20 and Statement of Community Involvement, which, as was a
stated aim of the motion, reflects good practice as set out in
the Market Research Society and relevant planning
guidance.

In an aim to make our consultation
process as user friendly as possible, we have received responses to
customer feedback that the ‘Objective’ system was
extremely difficult to use, and therefore, whilst the
‘Objective’ system could carry out consultations we
strived to make things as user friendly as possible.

We will now use our acquired Smart Survey
consultation software, which is used in the business sector by the
likes of Microsoft, BP, the AA & HSBC and in the public and
charities sector by Met Police, Ofsted, The Environment Agency and
central government to name but a few, and we shall use this for all
consultations – I am pleased to say we will use this for the
first time during the forthcoming Vale Local Plan modifications
consultation due to launch next week on 18
February.

As per the original motion we do use
open-ended questions to gain customer feedback whenever this is
appropriate; I say this as there is always the need to balance
the desire for open ended questions with the additional cost of
analysing the significant volume of data that is gathered from
them, which much of the time is time & money well spent, but it
is not a ‘one size fits all’,
solution.

Alongside open-ended questions (such as
do you have any further comments / other etc) we also routinely use
open questions in line with industry good practice (which are
non-leading questions) in addition to closed questions where
appropriate (leading questions).

We also have cases, such as, Local Plan
(Regulation 19) and Neighbourhood Plan (Regulation
16) consultation questions which are prescribed by
legislation. Hence the need for “Where we have control of the
consultation” being included in the 2016 motion.

Reports of consultations with responses
as appropriate are routinely published on the ‘Have Your
Say’ section of our website or the Local Plan pages. A
reminder to all at Council this is beyond what we are legislatively
required to do - for planning consultation we are only required to
provide a report to the inspector and there is no requirement for
most non-planning consultations - but we believe in our approach
and that this supports our ongoing commitment to openness and
transparency.

In reference to the specific instances
the councillor asks:

Regarding Shippon this
was largely due to unfortunate human errors incurred when officers
are dealing with high demand and tight timescales, it is not an
excuse but an explanation. I know that Cllr Webber will be
aware of this as the relevant team have already apologised for the
oversight to the parish and to Cllr Catherine Webber as the ward
councillor. It is worth acknowledging that there was no
obligation to consult, but there was the intention, and so the
formal apology was made.

With regards to Reg 19, the team are not
aware of any respondents not being captured but accept that there
was one at Reg 18 which was addressed at Reg 19. Again, the team
had about 7000 comments to manually handle through the old
Objective consultation system, which, as we have already
established, was not user friendly. As already stated, action
has been taken to replace the system for all forthcoming
consultations.

In terms of Oxfordshire Plan 2050 and the
views raised at the stakeholder event, this was also discussed at
the Cabinet meeting on 4th February and while I am not
aware of the views Cllr Webber is referring to both Cabinet Members
and Officers present were keen to point out the Oxfordshire Plan
document you reference in your question is a high level strategic
document and some of the views expressed may not be appropriate
content at this time but may hold value as we continue with
the process. As members should be aware, we are about to start the
public consultation process which provides ample opportunity for
people to feed in their thoughts. We anticipate the engagement
process will raise many issues all of which will be collected, fed
back and considered before the next iteration of the
plan”.

Supplementary question

In response to a supplementary question Councillor
Blagrove stated that whilst it was not possible to provide a
guarantee similar issues would not affect future consultations
every effort would be made to reduce the risks with the updated
system referred to in his answer above.

Councillor Emily Smith to Councillor Roger Cox,
Leader of the Council

In December
2014 Council passed a motion to: include “written information
about Vale activities, service and programmes with future council
tax demands”. When looking into progress on this motion I
learned that neither Finance or Communications officers were aware
of this decision by Council and confirmed that the requested
information for residents was never produced.

Was the Leader aware that this decision by Council was not
actioned? Can he seek assurances from officers that other motions
passed by members since 2014 have been actioned and that mechanisms
are in place to track future motions?

Last summer Transport for New Homes and the
Foundation for Integrated Transport report received national press
coverage. Their report highlighted the problems with new housing
estates being designed around car use, adding to traffic congestion
and preventing healthy communities developing. They highlighted
Great Western Park as an example of poor practice and the report
appeared on the BBC News website under the headline ‘Young
couples trapped in car dependency’. In November, Oxfordshire
County Council unanimously passed a motion to invest in
‘Active Travel’ and allocate more space for cyclists
and pedestrians. But the County Council cannot ensure pedestrians
and cyclists are prioritised in new housing developments without
collaboration with local planning authorities.

How is the Cabinet member working with county colleagues and others
to ensure that the Vale’s planning policies prioritise
cyclists and pedestrians and reduce car dependency when we permit
new housing developments? Have any specific changes been discussed
as a result of the ‘Active Travel’ motion at the County
Council?

Councillor Cox undertook to provide a
written response

Councillor Judy Roberts to Councillor Eric Batts,
Cabinet Member for Legal and Democratic

I welcome the announcement that Homes England have
approved a grant for the only ‘Vale affordable housing in
perpetuity project’ off the Eynsham Road. The Oxfordshire
Community Land Trust have already prepared their planning
application for this development but require the easement from the
Vale for which this grant was awarded to progress the scheme. The
Vale applied for this grant in Summer 2018 and the scheme has been
in development for a lot longer. So, please can the Cabinet member
explain why the easement has still not been signed?

At the request of Council in October 2018, the leader
of the council wrote to the Secretary of State for Housing,
Communities and Local Government to request that they review the
definition of housing ‘affordability’. The minister for
housing’s reply told us unequivocally that it has always been this council’s responsibility and within
our power to set our affordable housing policies to reflect local
circumstances. We don’t need Government to redo anything.
Council can set our policies to reflect our own local
circumstances. I’m surprised this was apparently news to the
leader.

The national policy requires that affordable rent be
at least 20% below market rents, and similarly,
that affordable sales prices be at least 20% below
market sales prices. The system is set up so that we rely on market
developers to provide solutions to our local affordable housing
needs. Clearly that’s not been a success. Recent reports tell
us local house prices are between 7 and 17 times annual earnings,
when we know a healthy ratio is about 4 or 5 times annual
earnings.

Although it was the leader who wrote the letter to
Ministry of Housing Communities & Local Government about
affordability, it is the cabinet member for planning to whom I
direct this question. What are some of the options to consider that
could finally make a dent in the problem of a lack of genuinely
affordable housing in Vale?

Councillor Cox undertook to provide a
written response

Councillor Debby Hallett to Councillor Roger Cox,
Cabinet Member for Partnership and Insight

How much money did Vale decide to contribute to the
Environment Agency’s recently-cancelled Abingdon flood
scheme? What was the evidence supporting this decision, who
decided, when, and by what means?

There is a recurring problem with new build housing
developments not being completed to an acceptable standard in line
with the approved plans.

There are examples from around the Vale where
developers are not building roads, drainage, homes and play areas
to the specifications agreed when planning permission was granted
which then creates work for this council to rectify – at a
cost for this council and disruption to residents.

Does the Cabinet member agree that councils should have more legal
powers in relation to planning enforcement? And if so, what is the
Cabinet member doing to lobby government to return responsibility
for allbuilding control matters to
local councils?